The automatic stitching of high-resolution images into a single wide-field-of-view mosaic is a capability currently being developed by researchers with disparate applications. Software has been developed to enable users to form panoramic views from individual snapshots taken by digital cameras. Typically, this type of software is employed in a non-real-time, post-processing environment to generate panoramic images or image sequences for later playback.
However, this type of software cannot work in a real-time, high performance environment. For example, a high performance aircraft may be provided with a multiple cameras—infrared or visible light—generating a plurality of images simultaneously or substantially simultaneously. The cameras can be distributed to provide a very wide angle of coverage. For example, six (6) cameras may provide 4π steradian coverage of the world exterior to the aircraft and a portion of may be presented to the pilot with the use of a helmet mounted display (HMD). The challenge is to create a mosaic output image from multiple cameras real-world-registered to the pilot view direction with the imagery as seamless and uniform as possible across camera boundaries.